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Nuclear Engineer Applies MBA to Keep Power Plants Healthy
As the president and chief executive officer of AREVA NP Inc., Thomas Christopher logged 140 days in the air last year, traveling from customer to customer in the high-stakes, intensely demanding nuclear energy industry.
So it's no surprise that Christopher, who was named one of the Katz School's distinguished alumni in 2008, is looking forward to his retirement in 2009, when he plans to play golf, spend time with his family, and generally find out how the other half lives.
"It's a unique market; it's a unique business," he says of nuclear energy production. "Most other businesses have hundreds, if not thousands, of customers. Here, you only have 24 customers. And they spend $22 billion a year, every year, and they demand a lot of your time. It's a high-stakes game, [with] high risks, high rewards."
Customers know Christopher well; he has been to every nuclear plant in North America, South America, and Europe. They also know his wife, Dale, and their five children. The reason for the intensity is obvious: If a unit shuts down, a utility can hemorrhage as much as $1 million a day.
"If you like problem solving and decision making, this is the business for you," he says. "The work requires much more customized engineering than industries such as automobile production. Our field engineers go to the site, turn the portable manipulators and robots loose, start inspecting the components, and establish repair programs in real time."
The rewards are high-a 60-day job can bring an engineer a bonus check of $5,000 or more-but there is virtually no margin for error; after all, the plant in question is dealing with nuclear power.
Fortunately, Christopher, the son of a U.S. Navy aviator, is well accustomed to approaching new situations head on. He attended six grade schools and two high schools before enrolling in the U.S. Naval Academy to earn a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. A master's degree in engineering mechanics from Georgia Institute of Technology followed before he took a job with Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, where he stayed from 1973 to 1995.
Shortly after taking the Westinghouse job, he decided to pursue a Master of Business Administration degree at the University of Pittsburgh.
"My feeling was [that] to move up in the managing ranks at Westinghouse, I'd need a better understanding of finance and accounting and also of the growing legal aspects of business," Christopher says.
Though he enrolled in 1975, attending graduate school at night, an accident that cost him one of his eyes interrupted his studies. He returned and was able to graduate in 1980.
"I enjoyed the professors," he says. "One was the CEO of his own business, and that dialogue was very interesting. To get an outsider's view of the things I had seen inside the company was very useful; it gave me a level of comparison and a broader perspective."
In 1995, Westinghouse moved Christopher to Orlando, Fla., to work in its power generation business, where he stayed for five years before he assumed his current post with AREVA in Lynchburg, Va. With nuclear energy taking a more prominent role in the national dialogue about energy independence, business has been booming.
"It's a remarkable time for the industry," says Christopher, who notes that increased demand for electricity, combined with the effects of rising fuel costs of natural gas and coal-fired plants, has led to a new cycle in which new nuclear plants are getting licensed.
"This time, we're going into the new construction period with 30 years of experience behind us," he says. "The operating units are performing extremely well, and the new ones will perform even better. They're very valuable for the U.S. economy."